Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Here on the east coast of the US, we’ve
had a strange surge of summer weather.
It’s been nice to shed the coats and scarves and gloves, even though we
know this is not such a benign phenomenon.

In all of human history, there’s never
been a time when humans felt responsible for the weather. No wonder climate change denial is so
prevalent, besides the fact that it’s well-funded by the businesses that
contribute to it. Beyond that, this new way
of understanding the world is hard. It’s
burdensome.

The weather has always been vast,
powerful, a region populated by gods.
From Zeus snippily hurling his thunderbolts, there was always a
capricious quality about it. It was
Fate, it was something that humans had to submit to, and this capacity to
submit was a key ingredient in religious devotion. Even
when the weather ruined your life, even when it starved you and killed your
loved ones, you had no choice but to bow to it.

And now we know that, as much as the
weather influences us, we also influence it.
The trees we chop, the color of our rooftops, the particles we
manufacture, it’s all us, swaying and converting and influencing those
ferocious weather gods. But we can’t
just demand that the weather do our bidding, any more than we can point our
fingers at an electric outlet and demand that the electricity flow. No, we have to learn its language. We have to speak the language of our former
gods.

We’ve always suspected that we could
influence those weather gods through prayer and sacrifice. I think we were on the right track, and if we
had kept up these rituals, we might have noticed the earth’s distress much
earlier. And now we have to do a lot of
praying and sacrificing in a hurry.
Praying that a ray of light enter the thick brains of the country’s current
leaders. Sacrificing some old
conveniences for new ways of living.

In March, we get a chance to backtrack, and
to work on this relationship, because Venus, the planet of love, will be
retrograde. Starting on March 4, she’ll
be going in apparent backward motion for about six weeks. And so this is a time to look at everything
we love: the ideas, the things, and the
people. How do we love? How do we connect?

The relationship between the human race
and the earth can tell us something about our patterns of loving. First, we were subservient, at the mercy of
these fierce gods of lightning and rain and sunlight. Then we gained a bit more independence, harnessing
the powers of warmth and light, and at that point, we could’ve had an equal
relationship. But fear was still driving
humans, and we chose domination.

At its root, domination is always fear. Dominating the weather is about trying to rise above those wild, elemental powers. Dominating
women is essentially a fear of women’s unique ability to give birth. Domination of gay people is based on the fear
that patriarchy won’t prevail if people have a choice about their orientation. Domination of African-Americans is the fear that
that cruelty will be answered in kind, and legitimate anger will seek
retribution in blood. And the longer domination
goes on, the stronger the fear grows, and the harder it is to root out.

And domination precludes love. On writing this, I thought about S & M,
and then I realized that that's play domination, not the real thing. S & M is based on mutual consent and the person
at the bottom always has a “stop” signal to reassert control. True domination doesn’t allow this level of mutual
awareness.

No, in domination, love is crowded
out. And we all know that love is key to
survival for our species. Unloved humans
do not thrive. They die early, as
wistful babies, and they die late, as neglected senior citizens.

It takes great courage to turn fear into
love, and this is the challenge of our times.
Venus’ retrograde through Aries will show us something of how this
works. Aries is the fire sign that has
most to do with autonomy and independence, and Aries’ keyword is, “I am.” With Venus
moving in reverse in Aries, that changes to, “Am I?” and further on, “Who am I?”

The answer for all of us is “a lover”. All of us love something or someone, but what
do we do with this energy? Do we use it to possess, and to feed our
addictions? Do we use it to connect, to
celebrate, and to find joy? Do we truly see
the people and things we love, or are they just our mirrors? Or is it always some combination of these
things? Does love cease when the person
or thing or god you’ve loved is ready to shift roles?

We know Trump loves an overcooked steak
and the clink of a cash register, but what else does he love? Looking at his chart, we see Venus in the emotional,
affectionate sign Cancer, so we know he is attached to many people, places and
objects. But Venus is also conjunct Saturn,
the planet of fear, so he is also very afraid of losing what/who he loves. The fear leads him to work hard to maintain
control, to dominate.

But this doesn’t work when you’re trying
to govern millions of people with various and immediate needs. And it doesn’t work with the weather gods,
who are waiting for us to learn how to communicate with them, to speak the wider
languages of wind and rain. They are
waiting for us to be empowered by love, rather than frightened by it.

Venus is not just the planet of love,
but the planet of beauty. And it seems
to me what we need to do is stitch some beauty together – not just in art
museums and manicured gardens, but in daily life for all people. When all people live and work in places that
feed the spirit, where there is air and sun and an absence of fear, then we’ll
be in a place of balance with the earth.
Everything she has given us is beautiful, and when we learn to echo that
beauty, we can be the lovers we were born to be.

Friday, February 3, 2017

It’s ironic that in the middle of this mess,
when so many immigrants find themselves in limbo, that my wife finally got her
green card. So we’re staying. We’re not running off to Canada, thank you
very much.

Of course, it has nothing to do with
Trump, any more than current upticks in employment do. But it reminds me that there is a momentum
that’s already been set. We’re moving
towards a wider and more inclusive future, and we’ll get there. It’s just that progress will be a bit slower,
what with Trump amusing himself with all the shiny knobs in the driver’s seat.

The Women’s March was also
encouraging. Half a million women, a
crowd spotted with pink hand-knitted hats, thousands of pithy home-made signs. I
felt the enormous power of women like a hand raising me up into an unmarked
sky. I moved above the rumble of dread
and fear coming from this new administration. I knew that growl of thunder was mostly
bluster, that there was nothing there that could bend the human spirit.

There’s an energizing aspect this month
- Jupiter opposing Uranus - and this will help us avoid resistance fatigue. But does show that things are not going to
settle down in February. Not for any of
us.

So yes, Trump and his minions will
probably do all kinds of outrageous things this month. And the rest of us – people interested in a
fairer and more civil society – will stay underfoot, using every tool we can
call to hand. There’s a great deal of creativity
in this Jupiter/Uranus opposition.

This aspect is basically about rules vs.
anarchy. Jupiter in Libra stands for
laws, protocols, civility, and moral standards.
And yes, I have to say it. Even
though I’ve seen myself as a rule-breaker most of my life, I’m actually quite
invested in the idea of a truly lawful society, one that treats everyone
equally, with unhurried deliberation. One that’s transparent and open to all. One
that’s expressed in dignity and courtesy to others.

And to some extent, we have that
here. Oh, I know the law we have is far
from perfect, both in practice and in theory.
But there are some basic ideals that have become enshrined in our law
and our system of government, some of them quite precious. So we’ll be using those, relying on
them. Jupiter in Libra is also about
relationships, about compromise and cooperation, and we’ll also need to master
this if we are going to make positive changes in this world.

And then there’s Uranus, planet of
sudden shocking changes. This is Trump’s
specialty, mostly because he’s kind of a brat.
He doesn’t believe that any set of rules has any hold over him, and I
have a feeling that some of the people who voted for him were kind of
fascinated by this unbound, unfettered quality of his. It’s the same reason we all like to look at
videos of little kids and puppies. Look
at what they get away with! Look how
awkward!

So he’s got the Uranus thing down, as we
can also see by the sun/Uranus conjunction in his natal chart. He’s got people around him trying to handle
him, but they’re not generally going to succeed. He’ll seem docile up to a point, but then he’ll
turn around and do something unexpected.
And of course, you know what they say about too many cooks. There are a lot of people around Trump, pulling
strings in all different directions, so this is going to add to the
flailing.

But we have to own Uranus too. The secret to dealing with an opposition is to
find ways to express both sides of it, to bring them together. We already are pretty good at the law side of
things. We have the ideals, the basic
human sense of justice, on our side. How
do we work in the creative excitement of Uranus? How do we keep them as off-balance as they’ve
kept us?

It’s not easy because we’re used to
seeing the office of the presidency of one of authority and dignity. That goes along with our basic respect for
law. And yes, we’re used to seeing a
dignified, intelligent man there. But
Trump is doing his best to show us that the office can become an international laughingstock,
and it can happen in a matter of days. So I think we can adjust.

So I suggest that this movement, our
movement, is going to be two-pronged, in order to succeed. You could say it’s a juggling act. One ball is law, one is anarchy, and we need
them both in the air. We need our pinstriped
lawyers, working for justice in the courts, and we need the crazy radicals,
calling into question all the things we thought we knew.

So don’t worry if some of your friends
have gone completely around the bend, and are spending their time mumbling
about the revolutionary things they intend to do. Encourage them! We need the wild-eyed ones. Give them some ambrosia, and let’s get
moving. Let’s give our movement color
and sound and excitement. Let’s take it
where we never dreamed we’d go.

But at the same time, we have to keep
our footing. We need to be able to leap
off the high wire and land upright in a world of justice, peace and equality. We can do it.
Our net is wide. Our net is as
wide as the this land.